Tinwerks is a Chicago-based company that does ground-up design and manufacture of metal boxes. Chances are that if your special edition DVD boxed set, candy, gum, food, toys, or cigars came in an uber-cool tin, these guys did it.

Now that I think about it, this is actually the fourth card design I sent them in 2009. The first one was this . . .

(click image for detail)

. . . but they weren’t feeling it, for some reason. So I sent them this . . .

(click image for detail)

. . . which they said was still a bit too corporate. They were looking for something that jumped off the page, something that would show they were a breed apart. Discussion still revolved around robots and snowmen and this and that . . . and then I came up with a giant snowman attacking Tokyo.

Instant love. Do it.

But before getting too far into this version, I sent the Big Bosses the following:

(click image for detail)

The idea being that the runners would be redrawn as a fleeing mob, include some 1950s jets flying around and a pair of insets with shocked citizens and scientist in the bottom corners. Go for a total movie poster look.

And they loved it! They said it was the best Iron Maiden Christmas card they’d ever seen, which I took as a high compliment. But the image was not quite, er, corporate enough — didn’t send the right message or something. So, back to the drawing tablet.

Some more ideas, more back-and-forth and I sent them this one:

It’s got the same basic elements as the final product but the chest design on this guy was a bit much. The final robot design has a nice Power Rangers feel to it that the big-wigs really dug. Actually, they went nuts over it. So much so that there was talk of having “Tinny” (as this guy’s now known throughout the company) at trade shows and printed on t-shirts, but it either never happened or I never got a shirt — which is a drag, because I would be wearing it with pride.